west – French Ethereal

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My husband and I spent two days exploring the town of Tombstone, Arizona and got to see the wonderful flavor and history of this Old West town that was known for its silver mining and cattle industries, saloons and bathhouses for miners and cowhands to blow off some steam in, and the occasional gunfight and lawlessness of which the West is best known…

A picture within a picture ~ the county courthouse in the background

A bit of Allen Street ~ where reenactors pace the street and “madams” and barkeeps still ply their wares drawing in today’s customers for food and drink.

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Our first day we visited the County Courthouse where many a man was tried for his cattle rustling and disorderly conduct (think gunfights here). The courthouse houses an in-depth overview of the city and surrounding area’s history through hundreds of photographs and placards telling the stories of Tombstone. Amazingly, the main part of the town’s history really occurred over a span of a few short years ~ roughly from 1879 – 1886 ~ before the silver mines tapped-out.

“Built in 1882 in the shape of a Roman cross, the two-story Victorian structure once housed the offices of the sheriff, recorder, treasurer, board of supervisors, jail, and courtrooms of Cochise County. Today, the 12,000 square foot courthouse is a museum filled with the glitter and guns of those who tamed the territory.” ~ Arizona State Parks: Tombstone Courthouse website, http://azstateparks.com/Parks/TOCO

The roller shade curtain-pull was eerily reminiscent of the gallows below ~ definitely ugly!

A nice display of the many types of barbed wire created to house livestock.

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Some of the good of the city were the softer things found ~ pictures of the families who came to stay in Tombstone and tried to make a living there apart from the “sinful” side of the town’s life. Cattle ranchers and hotel owners, school children, seamstresses and laundresses were also a part of Tombstone life and their memories are immortalized here in the courthouse displays.

A westerly window view ~ a lovely garden of a neighboring

Victorian home just outside the courthouse.

Lovely creamware and tea leaf ironstone china pieces

(bottom shelf) along with other tea set patterns ~ lefthand photograph.

A girl’s playthings ~ an early stuffed bear, Kewpie doll and miniature tea set pieces along with miniature silver serving pieces.

Our second day’s visit was all about the gunfight at the OK Corral. Reenactors dressed as the Earp or Clanton clans stand out on Allen Street inviting tourists to come see the famous gunfight as it happened in the now-enclosed OK Corral. This was definitely the Bad of our visit! Guests are invited to participate by booing for the bad guys and cheering for the good as actors enter or leave each scene ~ a fun show with lots of guns firing off! There are plenty of fun things for families to do afterwards from seeing real horse pens, old saddles and tack; to visiting a working blacksmith’s shop where horseshoes can be punched with loved ones’ names for purchase along with other available iron items; and surreys and wagons can be climbed into and “ridden.” Everyone can also try his or her hand at roping “cattle” inside the corral, too, which is harder than it looks. Inside the store, real 1880’s Winchester rifles and paraphernalia are on display and books and souvenirs can be bought. Tickets to the gunfight show include a short movie about the OK Corral gunfight narrated by Vincent Price as well as entrance to the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper company and museum, which is just opposite around the city block.

“Now just hold on a minute! Just put down your guns!”

And, you know the rest of the story!

And when the dust settled our actors got up,

bowed to the crowd, and quietly exited the stage.

–>

We highly recommend Tombstone as a place to visit!

Tombstone’s Boot Hill

was my previous post.

Loads of history, fun exhibits and adventure

in this here town!

Next time I’ll share about touring the

Good Enough silver mine

and

I am also cooking up a post about the

buildings and architecture

found here.

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Blessings to you,

Barb -]:)

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Tombstone’s Boot Hill ~ A Serene Cemetery With a Past…

November 7, 2016June 21, 2019 French Ethereal

Tombstone, AZ’s Boot Hill Cemetery

is the final “home” for various

notorious inhabitants

however

there is much more to this cemetery…

For sure, seven of Tombstone’s early 1880’s residents were hanged for their crimes. Others were shot dead, of course, at the OK Corral gunfight and during other lesser known fights. There were skirmishes between residents and the local Apache tribes but not as many as one might think. There were also cattle rustling operations going on and stagecoach robberies where bandits were looking for the ultimate prize ~ silver ingots mined from the silver mines in and around the Tombstone area.

Here lies Billy Clanton, and brothers Tom and Frank McLaury killed in the OK Corral incident. Billy Clanton is buried, here, just to the right of his notorious father, Newman Haynes “Old Man” Clanton. The Clantons had a successful cattle ranching business but never registered a cattle brand with Cochise County {where Tombstone is located} and were known to have been rustling cattle from Mexican ranches on the other side of the Arizona/Sonoran border. The McLaurys were hired hands at their ranch. For more information about Old Man Clanton and his family, see Newman Haynes Clanton. Information for this section gained from this article on Wikipedia.

Mrs. Stump is the woman who is buried in this ornate iron mausoleum. Some women and I discussed why her grave was thusly decorated.

After finding her name in the little $3.00 pamphlet I had purchased at the Boot Hill Cemetery entrance, we learned that Mrs. Stump passed in childbirth. Perhaps her death was forever immortalized by a loving husband and family in this “crib” surrounding and protecting her and her baby…

There are seven rows and their inhabitants are listed if their names were known. Graves are remarked as gravemarkers deteriorate. Looking at all of the desert plant life thriving among the buried dead here at Boot Hill, the cemetery houses a wonderful xeriscape garden with a wide variety of native plants from pipe organ cactus to creosote bushes which grow everywhere around Tombstone.

One of the women I met at the cemetery told me a story: the oil harvested from the creosote bush was used to oil and lubricate railroad ties back in the 1800’s. There are a couple of distillations of creosote oils which were used to treat wood and are now considered toxic, but back in the day it was a useful substance.

She also shared that when you crush the leaves and smell your hand, creosote has a lovely scent! We decided it would make a lovely perfume {if it weren’t so toxic}. I remembered the story of Moses and the Burning Bush. The creosote bush was probably the Biblical plant that would catch on fire but wouldn’t burn up that God spoke through to Moses.

It was evening time and the light cast on these cairn graves was beautiful. Each stone, marker and cross glowed in the evening’s God~light. Perhaps this is why the Jewish people originally buried their dead up on this hill ~ which leads me to the photograph at the beginning of this blog post.

In an article written by Eileen R. Warshaw, PH.D., titled What Became of the Jews of Tombstone?, Ms. Warshaw writes about the many Jewish settlers and merchants who lived in Tombstone back when this area was first used as a cemetery. Town records were lost in two fires; however, newspaper articles state that two Jewish men may be buried here: Mr. Rosenthal and Mr. M. M. Steinthal. There are a number of graves which have no names as they were lost to time or were originally {or intentionally} unmarked. For more information, please refer to her article. I was unable to link to it due to this program’s limitations. Please find her article at: http://azjewishlife.com/what-became-jews-tombstone/.

This top photograph shows the standing marker for The Jewish Cemetery and Memorial and I was moved by the stones visitors have placed on its top spar. Do you know the significance of this? If you have seen the movie Schindler’s List, about Nazi wartime Germany and how Oskar Schindler helped save hundreds of Jews whom had worked for him in his factory, then you already know part of the story.

Rocks are placed on top of graves of Jewish people who have died as a symbol of permanence ~ of memory ~ that their souls will be remembered. In Jewish custom, flowers fade just as life, so flowers are hardly ever put on a Jewish grave. Instead, rocks have permanence and never will fade; therefore, they are placed upon a loved one’s grave as a symbol of remembrance. A beautiful, beautiful custom ~ one that is sooo endearing to this author!

So just how did Boot Hill Cemetery gets its name? From the saying of how a lot of the inhabitants DID die: They died with their boots on. This final photograph shows the glorious commanding view from Boot Hill across the San Pedro Valley to the Dragoon Mountains. A peaceful and serene final resting place for everyone buried here, beneath their rocks of permanence…

I’ll be writing more about our visit to

Tombstone over the coming days.

Please leave a comment as I’d love

to hear your thoughts about this and other posts,

and do

check back for further posts.

🙂

We will be traveling the next three days

so I hope to get some more

posts up for you

when I have down~time.

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Flowers of the Midwest and West

July 30, 2016June 21, 2019 French Ethereal

Sweet garden outside our hotel in Kyle, Texas

Today’s post is

about all the sweet gardens found

all over on our trip!

First stop:

After our first stop overnight, we ended up driving from just

on the edge of California into Arizona.

Getting gas in a little town

I found a store selling tamales and this was their storefront.

Loved this little pot of geraniums just

massively blooming

and not bothered by the heat of the day!

Carlsbad Caverns, NM

I found these gorgeous pink tulip~type plants

(notice how technical I am… 😉 )

The leaves and branches remind me of a type of heather

we have that can take the heat and lives quite nicely

in Southern California.

This plant is commonly called Kangaroo Paws for the little “paws” that bloom all along the branches.

Rest stops along the freeways in New Mexico and Texas had gorgeously manicured gardens and nice picnic shelters in which to take a good rest before travelling onward. The rest stop to the left was found when we were out of Austin somewhere and heading north towards Oklahoma.

The crepe myrtle trees (above right) were found in Fredericksburg, Texas and don’t they look incredible next to the brick walls of that building? Love those green shutters!!!

These birds were singing away as I walked by

after visiting one such rest area.

Their next is just to the right in the tree.

Literally, I just looked up and there they were!

More gorgeousness!

Found these roses in Texas and remembered

there is a group of folks

who call themselves Rose Rustlers…

I seriously thought about cutting off a small cutting

to take home and try to regrow

but I didn’t…

We spent the most time

in Texas

when we were getting our daughter settled

before heading north to South Dakota for our son’s wedding.

I found these bright sunflowers strewn in a

drainage ditch area one morning when

I was out walking with Yoda.

Aren’t they lovely?

This banana tree was completely surprising!

Banana trees live all over

Southern California

but I haven’t seen any actually producing bananas…

It was cool to see this one with its baby bunches

soon to be sweet fruit beginning to ripen!

This other flowering plant…

I’ve never seen one like it.

Interesting!

Well, that’s all for now.

If you happen

to know

the names of any of these plants are

that I haven’t named, please let me know

and I’ll add that information to this post.

As always, feel free to share this or any other of

my little “ramblings.”

I’d love it if you’d become a

French Ethereal Friend!

I’ve been trying to make the website’s email

work correctly.

And, I’m still trying to get the

Places to Visit ~ Carlsbad Caverns National Park

July 15, 2016June 21, 2019 French Ethereal

My daughter enjoying all of the fantastic speleothems called stalagmites {taken with my cell phone}.

Want a great place to take the whole family

on an upcoming vacation?

A place all dark, cool, and maybe a tiny bit scary inside?

A stalagmite looking like some kind of stacked ice cream cone.

Visit Carlsbad Caverns

up in the Guadalupe Mountains of

New Mexico

where mystery still surrounds the area as stories

of lost gold and Cibola still abound…

😉

Inside the Big Cavern

With no entrance fee into the park

itself until actually signing up for a *guided tour

or walking the caverns’ pathway by oneself

(Entrance fee is $10 age 16 and older, 15 and under are free),

park visitors can wander the outdoor pathways

exploring native vegetation

and

listening to park rangers talk about the magic of

the miners~of~old and stories of hidden gold.

*up to $20 for an adult, depending upon the cave tour taken ~ this fee

is in addition to the entrance fee.

Inside the visitors center

kiosk placards display how the caverns were formed,

famous photos by well-known photographers are on-view,

and park rangers are stationed about sharing the caverns history.

Ample parking is available outside the entrance

for cars as well as RVs,

pull up your campers along both sides of a long, curving island

with a wide pathway meant for people to get out and stretch,

set up their picnic supplies, table and chairs.

{no overnight parking allowed; however, come and stay for the day!}

So come and take in the

Surrounding beauty that is the caverns…

Whether above surface or below people of all ages will enjoy the

wonders of the caves and their formations.

Stay until evening time and watch the nightly bat show

as several species of bats fly out to feast on insects and fruit

as the sky’s golden glow fades with the setting sun.

I’ll be sharing more cavern photos

with you over

the next couple of weeks as well as

THAT SURPRISE PLACE

I visited this week in Texas…

{still writing up that post!}

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French Ethereal.

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Enjoy your summer,

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Tag: west

Tombstone in Two Days ~ the Good, the Bad & the Ugly

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Tombstone’s Boot Hill ~ A Serene Cemetery With a Past…

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Flowers of the Midwest and West

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Places to Visit ~ Carlsbad Caverns National Park

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